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Why I CANNOT Believe in The Resurrection

SeekingAllTruth

Well-Known Member
First, there IS evidence outside the Bible.

Second, start with the Bible and use logic. Why did 12 teams of writers risk expulsion from Jewish life and culture and persecution by Rome to bring you a falsehood about the resurrection?

PS. I'll provide 1) once you deal with 2).

Go ahead and provide No 1. I'll answer No 2 right now. What written evidence do you have that says all the apostles died for their faith? I mean besides Josh MacDowell's idiotic tome, "The fate of the Apostles" Even the New Testament doesn't say what happened to them.
 

SeekingAllTruth

Well-Known Member
The resurrection is part of a mythical religious story. The intent of which is to convey a revelation, and a promise. Treating it as if it were a newspaper or history book is missing the point. No "belief" is required of you by the story. Belief comes after you have discerned the message and the promise posed by the story, and you try it out in your life to see if it manifests.
So you're saying Jesus didn't really rise bodily from the tomb. It's all a hoax designed to convey a belief like Hercules and Zeus.
 

SeekingAllTruth

Well-Known Member
Jesus life and death are shown historically. Historians believe also that the first message of Christianity was that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Is the Bible reliable history? It seems to be from what has been discovered by historians and archaeologists.
Is the Bible reliable history when it comes to supernatural events?
Do you also not believe the apostles existed?
It's not shown historically, Brian.
 
Yes. God should have known the precise amount of evidence it would take to convince the world his son was crucified for our sins. The fact he did NOT is evidenced by the fact that 2/3's of the world cannot believe in Jesus either. Their failure to believe is on God's shoulders, not theirs.
That’s where you’re wrong, He did and He wrote it down for all to see, everyone is without excuse. It’s plain to see and the only reason people don’t come to Christ is in John 3. There will be weeping and knashing of teeth because of human beings folly of trying to blame God, when it will be shown how evil men are and the lengths God went to save them.
 

SeekingAllTruth

Well-Known Member
That’s where you’re wrong, He did and He wrote it down for all to see, everyone is without excuse. It’s plain to see and the only reason people don’t come to Christ is in John 3. There will be weeping and knashing of teeth because of human beings folly of trying to blame God, when it will be shown how evil men are and the lengths God went to save them.
Those manuscripts are not worth the paper they are written on. They were written as faith testimonies to get people to believe in a mythical person.
 

SeekingAllTruth

Well-Known Member
Why is it important to you not to believe? You seem to be putting quite a lot of effort into this.

Believers in the divinity of Christ take the resurrection on faith. Some followers of other traditions and faiths, including many agnostics, find much wisdom in the message of the Gospels, while seeing Jesus as a mortal man like us.

You don’t believe in the resurrection? I respect that, absolutely. What do you believe in?
You missed the entire point. I want to believe but I am not able to because the lack of evidence proves that Jesus, the son of god who died for our sins is a myth. There may have been a real Jesus but all the evidence says he died and that was the end of him.
 

Vee

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Notice I didn't say, "I refuse to" The point is I cannot believe in it.

I watched a debate on the resurrection this morning. At some point, Matt Dillahunty came out and asked "Do you have anything outside the Bible to support the resurrection." Jonathan McLatchie answered. "NO."

That's it in a nutshell. All apologists--Craig, Licona, Horn, Woods, et al use nothing but the Bible to lay out their "evidence" Jesus rose. Claim: the apostles saw something that convinced them. Fact: There is no secular evidence anywhere outside the Bible that mentions the apostles. Claim: the empty tomb. Fact we have no empty tomb. Claim: the apostles were willing to die for their belief. Fact: we have nothing inside and outside the Bible that mentions what most of the apostles subsequently did or how they died. Claim: There were eyewitnesses. Fact: Nobody outside the Bible recorded a single thing about seeing Jesus after he was crucified.

Outrageous claim:

The historical evidence shows that: the grave was empty; the grave clothes were neatly left behind; the stone enclosing the tomb was rolled away; the body of Jesus was never found.

10 Concise Pieces of Evidence for the Resurrection - The Gospel Coalition | Canada

WHAT historical evidence????????
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I mean in the link above it gets much MUCH worse than that.

Fact: take away the Bible and any "proof" for Jesus' resurrection collapses.

Resurrection, like a few other things, comes down to faith. Either you believe it or not, but we don't have any physical evidence that can be presented. Even if there had been any physical evidence of Jesus being resurrected, he died nearly 2000 years ago so the evidence wouldn't be available anymore, anyway.
People who believe in God, obviously believe He can resurrect people, since He has the power to do it.
 

SeekingAllTruth

Well-Known Member
And you are 100% correct!

Take the Bible away, and the resurrection dissappears.
Then again, we would only have archaeology to tell us what happned thousands of years ago, and it will be like a fishersnet holding no construcyive information. Oh, keep in mind that most of the ancient archaeological finds in the Middle east conformed to what the Bible described and it was done between 200 years ago and now, at a time when most sceptics thought the Bible had no historical value.
We would perhaps have Philo, and Josephus to tell us, but they are also too biblical.
OK so what will we have telling us about the history of the world, if not the Bible?
Nope, you have to accept the value of the Bible can not be questioned as an historical book.
Sorry!
No secular Biblical scholar accepts the Bible as historic proof of Jesus.

Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up.
There are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus’ historical existence.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...xist-the-traditional-evidence-doesnt-hold-up/
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
You missed the entire point. I want to believe but I am not able to because the lack of evidence proves that Jesus, the son of god who died for our sins is a myth. There may have been a real Jesus but all the evidence says he died and that was the end of him.


Ah, okay, got you. You want to believe, but can’t. I do see your dilemma then.

You could of course say the he died but his message didn’t. Maybe the message is moon important than the messenger?
 

SA Huguenot

Well-Known Member
No secular Biblical scholar accepts the Bible as historic proof of Jesus.

Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up.
There are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus’ historical existence.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...xist-the-traditional-evidence-doesnt-hold-up/
Sure, one can doubt anything, but lets consider something quickly.
There was people who knew Jesus, they were apostles and disciples.
They wrote what they knew about him.
They went around the Jewish world, preached in synagogues, and made many Jews to accept Jesus as their Messiah.
These people also knew Jesus, or there was a lot of people who knew him, and remembered when He taught in their villages, and if these Apostles and Disciples would have concocted lies, they would have been corrected and such scriptures would have survived.

Therefore, by pure peer observation, it is highly impropable that Jesus never existed, and totally propable that the reason why these apostles gave their lives in believing that Jesus was ressurrected from the dead, and that He did exist.
Furthermore, it was the same first Christians who collected the writings about Jesus, and their desacendends who kept it safe during 300 years of persecution that gave us the NT.
people such as Polycarp, who knew John well, certainly would not have given his life by burning, if he thought there was a scant hint of corruption in the history of Jesus and the apostles.

I would like to continue, but it is time to go home now.
 
Those manuscripts are not worth the paper they are written on. They were written as faith testimonies to get people to believe in a mythical person.
They were eyewitness testimonies and you’re still accountable to God for what’s written in the Scriptures. We are now in the period of the ministry of the Holy Spirit who we are also accountable to.
“But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.”
‭‭John‬ ‭16:7-11‬ ‭NIV‬‬
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
First, there IS evidence outside the Bible.

Second, start with the Bible and use logic. Why did 12 teams of writers risk expulsion from Jewish life and culture and persecution by Rome to bring you a falsehood about the resurrection?

PS. I'll provide 1) once you deal with 2).
Argument number 2 here is circular reasoning. You assume the stories of the 12 apostles is historically factual. Rather, if all the stories about them were part of the mythology itself, then all you are doing is self-referential to the internal story itself.

One can also find logical consistencies in the stories of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. But that does not make Star Wars historically valid, because Lucas crafted the story well.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
There was people who knew Jesus, they were apostles and disciples.
They wrote what they knew about him.
The gospels were not written by people who knew him. They are anonymous authors, whom later traditions attached the names of characters from the stories themselves as supposed authors. They do not internally identify themselves, outside of the gospel of Luke, who himself did not ever meet Jesus. Paul likewise, saw Jesus in a vision, not in the flesh. So these are not eyewitnesses.

They went around the Jewish world, preached in synagogues, and made many Jews to accept Jesus as their Messiah.
These people also knew Jesus, or there was a lot of people who knew him, and remembered when He taught in their villages, and if these Apostles and Disciples would have concocted lies, they would have been corrected and such scriptures would have survived.
Or the author of the stories wrote them this way?

Therefore, by pure peer observation, it is highly improbable that Jesus never existed, and totally probable that the reason why these apostles gave their lives in believing that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, and that He did exist.
There are reasons to believe Jesus was an actual historical person, but it is not through self-referential logic arguments, such as claiming the stories of the apostles dying for the faith were accurate history.

But just to cite that single argument, that no one would be willing to give up their life for a lie, that is a fatally flawed argument. People die all the time, sacrifice their lives for what they believe to be true, even if it is complete a lie.

Take January 6 for example. A woman believed the Big Lie of the stolen election, hatched by the liar Trump. She took a bullet in the face and died, believing a manufactured lie. She laid down her life, believing it was true. Does her death confirm the Big Lie was actually true? (There is zero evidence any of it was even remotely factual).

So claiming they wouldn't have died for an untruth, has no merit. Proof of people laying down their lives for untruths happens all the time, from Heaven's Gate mass suicides, to flying airplanes into the Twin Towers, to religious zealots blowing themselves up for God, to MAGA fanatics believing the Big Lie and dying for it. That's never been a good argument for the truth of the stories about Jesus.
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
Fact: take away the Bible and any "proof" for Jesus' resurrection collapses.

Are you so naive to assume we don't know this. The Gospels are not statements of facts, nor were they ever meant to be, they are testimonies of faith, not documentaries, nor biographies, not chronological history.
 

Colt

Well-Known Member
The spirit testifies to the truth, but the resurrection was simply proof of his divinity, it’s not the original gospel.

Even the apostles didn’t believe until the saw it.
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
The spirit testifies to the truth, but the resurrection was simply proof of his divinity, it’s not the original gospel.

Even the apostles didn’t believe until the saw it.
what then shall we do?
we who did not see
 

SeekingAllTruth

Well-Known Member
Are you so naive to assume we don't know this. The Gospels are not statements of facts, nor were they ever meant to be, they are testimonies of faith, not documentaries, nor biographies, not chronological history.

Obviously lots of people around here don't know this.

Here's what the gospels are according to PBS award winning show, "Frontline":

"Neither biographies nor objective historical accounts,

the gospels resembled religious advertisements.

The gospels are NOT biographies in the modern sense of the word. Rather, they are stories told in such a way as to evoke a certain image of Jesus for a particular audience."


The Story Of The Storytellers - What Are The Gospels? | From Jesus To Christ | FRONTLINE | PBS
 
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